America's Foreign Policy 2022

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Briefing American foreign policy

A weary superpower

HO NO LULU

The world that the West built after the attack on Pearl Harbour is cracking, not least because America is lukewarm about preserving it

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line of white­painted moorings in Pearl Harbour—the old “Battleship Row”—maps America’s trajectory in the second world war. At one end a memorial straddles the sunken remains of the uss Arizona, a battleship destroyed during Ja­ pan’s surprise attack on December 7th 1941.

Most of the 1,177 sailors who perished on board remain entombed in the wreck. At the other end, the uss Missouri looms above the treeline with imposing 16­inch guns. It was on her deck that General Dou­ glas MacArthur accepted the formal sur­ render of imperial Japan, ending the war.

“The ships are the book­ends of the war,” says James Neuman, the offi cial his­ torian of Pearl Harbour’s naval base. “Their legacy is with us every single day.” Families of deceased veterans still come to scatter their ashes in the water. Some 30 survivors of the attack attended a ceremony this week to mark its 80th anniversary.

The “date which will live in infamy”, as Franklin Roosevelt called it, transformed America’s place in the world. The country

abandoned isolationism and, with “righ­ teous might”, entered the war in the Pacif­ ic. Four days later Hitler declared war on America, ensuring that it would join the war in Europe, too. Victory in the global confl ict, hastened by the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, established Amer­ ica as the world’s dominant power, which would go on to defeat the Soviet Union in the cold war.

New world disorder These days the liberal global order that America and its allies built over decades is breaking down, not least because succes­ sive American presidents have lost faith in one or other of its tenets. Barack Obama drew a red line against Syria’s use of chem­ ical weapons but did not enforce it. He withdrew from Iraq in 2011, only to return when jihadists fi lled the vacuum. Donald Trump embraced dictators, threatened to forsake allies and sought to dismantle in­ ternational institutions and norms that America had long fostered. Joe Biden, after

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proclaiming “America is back”, chaotically left Afghanistan, barely consulting allies.

His “foreign policy for the middle class” is Trump­like in its protectionism. What is more, Mr Trump still dominates the Re­ publican Party and may be back in the White House in 2025. An America that once waged a global “war on terror” and sought to democratise the Muslim world is turning inward, if not retrenching.

Echoes of the interwar years are multi­ plying. Many countries are suff ering from a pandemic, economic malaise and politi­ cal discontent. In Europe a revanchist power, Russia rather than Nazi Germany, is massing troops and menacing a neigh­ bour—Ukraine. In Asia a rising power, Chi­ na rather than imperial Japan, is arming for a possible invasion—of Taiwan. It seeks to displace America in the name of Asia for Asians. And the idea of enforcing arms control as a means of preserving the peace is proving as diffi cult as it did in the 1930s, with Iran and North Korea resisting eff orts to rein in their nuclear programmes.

Another reverberation from the past is the emergence of an American school of thought advocating “restraint” in foreign policy. This is not 1930s­style isolationism: today’s restrainers accept that America was right to fi ght the Axis powers, but they urge it to stop chasing “global supremacy”.

Admittedly, much is diff erent from eight decades ago. The spread of nuclear weapons makes great­power confl ict more

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Briefing American foreign policy

terrifying and less likely. The confi gura­ tion of global alliances has shifted: Japan and Germany are fi rmly in the American camp; China and Russia are moving closer together. And after decades of globalisa­ tion, the world is more interdependent economically. Even so, America’s self­ doubt, suspicion of globalisation, hyper­ partisan politics and unpredictable policy­ making prompt allies to question the reli­ ability of American power. What is Ameri­ ca still prepared to fi ght for?

Troubles in battalions As the world’s great power, America ends up having to deal with all its problems, from the war in Ethiopia to the instability in Latin America that is driving migrants to its southern border. However, it is the in­ tensifying disputes with China, Russia and Iran that are likeliest to test Mr Biden’s mettle. It is tempting to see them as signs of America’s decline. Has the debacle in Af­ ghanistan inspired the trio to challenge America’s resolve? A senior White House offi cial rejects the suggestion: all three are acting out of “fundamental dynamics” that predate Mr Biden’s election. China and Russia are motivated by irredentism, fear­ ing that Taiwan and Ukraine respectively are slipping away (largely because of their own bullying). Iran is exploiting the breach Mr Trump created when he abrogated Mr Obama’s nuclear deal in 2018.

Mr Biden has been trying to quieten things through diplomacy. At a video­con­ ference summit on December 7th, he warned Vladimir Putin, Russia’s leader, against invading Ukraine. Last month, dur­ ing a similar encounter with Xi Jinping, China’s president, Mr Biden said it was es­ sential to “ensure that the competition be­ tween our countries does not veer into confl ict, whether intended or unintend­ ed”. Meanwhile, in Vienna, American and Iranian diplomats have resumed nuclear negotiations after a fi ve­month hiatus.

But America’s ability to jaw­jaw de­ pends, at least to an extent, on its stomach for war­war. Hawkish strategists have long believed that America must be able and willing to use force not just in one confl ict at a time but in several at once. These days, however, mainstream foreign­policy thinkers increasingly argue that America can no longer try to do everything, every­ where, and must choose where to focus its political attention and fi nite resources. Re­ strainers go further: many of them think that none of the three looming crises is worth going to war over, and that any mili­ tary build­up intended to ward them off might in fact make confl ict more likely.

In “Tomorrow, the World”, Stephen Wertheim of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think­tank in Wash­ ington, argues that a transformation in America’s strategic thinking took place

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early in the second world war, between the fall of France in June 1940 and the attack on Pearl Harbour. Having previously believed that neutrality was necessary to protect American democracy, and that an open world order could be preserved by interna­ tional institutions, America’s policymak­ ers concluded that henceforth these would have to be upheld by armed might. Now, Mr Wertheim argues, the opposite is true.

Primacy “makes America less safe”, he says. “It makes enemies of people, who then take action against the United States, which then takes action against them.” The Carter doctrine, proclaimed in 1980, is a case in point. It asserted that any attempt by outside powers to gain control of the oil­rich Persian Gulf would be regarded as an assault on American vital interests.

America was thereafter drawn into the Middle East’s endless troubles. Too often, Mr Wertheim says, America has done the bidding of Israel and Arab allies.

The prime venue for such thinking is the Quincy Institute for Responsible State­ craft, a think­tank in Washington set up in 2019 with money from both Charles Koch, a generous funder of right­wing causes, and George Soros, a supporter of liberal inter­ nationalist groups. Quincy cheered the withdrawal from Afghanistan. “We were very much heartened by Biden’s decision,” says Andrew Bacevich, its president. He urges Mr Biden to leave the Middle East next. He also thinks America should, over time, withdraw from nato and close many of its 750­odd military bases and depots around the globe (see map). Such ideas have deep roots. The think­tank takes its name from America’s sixth president, John Quincy Adams, who declared that America “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy”. George Washington’s farewell ad­ dress in 1796 enjoined the young nation to “to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world”.

Yet the Quincy Institute’s medicine is

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too strong for most politicians. Commen­ tators chastise it for endangering global stability and America’s security, and being soft on Chinese human­rights abuses.

Public opinion is ambivalent. A poll for the Chicago Council on Global Aff airs last summer found that Americans approved of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, but were far from ready to abandon American primacy in the world. For the fi rst time, a majority favoured defending Taiwan.

Richard Fontaine, head of the Centre for a New American Security, a think­tank whose alumni occupy some prominent po­ sitions in the Biden administration, says opinion among foreign­policy experts is broadly split by generation: younger schol­ ars, dejected by years of fruitless war in Iraq and Afghanistan, are often sympathet­ ic to the idea of restraint. Any zeal to export democracy has abated. “There is a big disil­ lusionment with the missionary role,” he notes. “They say, ‘after Trump, the Capitol riots and covid, are we really going to tout our model?’”

These ideas have been seeping into Washington’s discourse—both among doves who want to reduce America’s com­ mitments globally, and among China hawks who want America to do less in the Middle East and Europe the better to direct attention and resources to Asia and the Pa­ cifi c. What of Mr Biden himself? “On one side, he looks like our kind of guy,” says Mr Bacevich. “On the other, defence spending is going up for no particular reason. And the administration seems to be leaning in­ to the idea of a cold war with China. Right now, Biden is all over the map.”

Several of the Biden administration’s important national­security policies re­ main in gestation. It has not yet issued a national­security strategy, and its nuclear “posture” is under review. Matters are not helped by the fact that many important jobs in national security and the diplomat­ ic corps remain empty.

Germany 119

United States

South Korea 73 Puerto Rico* 34

Japan 120

Italy 44

Guam* 54

United States, military presence overseas, 2021 Small facilities Source: David Vine, “Lists of US military bases abroad, 1776-2021”

*US territory

Bases†

†Including shared facilities

25 or more bases

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Briefing American foreign policy

China has more

Mr Biden’s interim national­security guidance, issued in March, emphasises economic regeneration at home as the foundation of American power abroad. It is long on global menaces. Pandemics, cli­ mate change, cyber threats and more are regarded as “profound, and in some cases, existential dangers”. It sees a global contest between democracies and autocracies, led

by China (the only power it considers capa­ ble of displacing America) and Russia (which plays a disruptive role).

Mr Biden has sought to revitalise Amer­ ica’s alliances and partnerships. This week he was due to rally America’s friends to the defence of democracy at a big video sum­ mit of some 100 countries. The agenda was vague; action is largely being left to a fol­ low­on gathering next year. Tellingly, the event was called a summit “for” democra­ cy, not a meeting “of” democracies.

As for hard power, the guidance de­ clares that “the use of military force should be a last resort, not the fi rst; diplomacy, de­ velopment and economic statecraft should be the leading instruments of American foreign policy.” Roosevelt gave priority in the war eff ort to Europe over Asia, even after Pearl Harbour. By contrast, Mr Biden’s priority is Asia, which means that he is ea­ ger both to devote less time and eff ort to Europe and also to get out of the Middle East and its “forever wars”. Yet turning principles into policy can be hard. The Pentagon’s review of military deploy­ ments, completed last month, left Ameri­ ca’s global footprint largely unchanged.

For both restrainers and China hawks, that was a missed opportunity.

For Mr Biden, however, the unfi nished business of Iran’s nuclear programme makes it hard to pull out of the Middle East.

During his election campaign, Mr Biden promised to restore and improve the nuc­ lear deal with Iran signed by Mr Obama in 2015 and repudiated by Mr Trump three

years later. The pact limited Iran’s nuclear programme for a decade or more and sub­ jected it to strong inspections thereafter, in return for a partial lifting of sanctions. Mr Biden has maintained sanctions that Mr Trump imposed to exert “maximum pres­ sure” on Iran. But the clerical regime has responded by accelerating its nuclear pro­ gramme, reducing the time it needs to make a bomb’s­worth of fi ssile material from a year or so to a month or less.

Indirect talks between America and Iran resumed in Vienna in late November.

But the process is already faltering as American offi cials accuse Iran of not nego­ tiating seriously. Mr Biden has vowed that Iran will not obtain a nuclear weapon on his watch. Offi cials have warned they will soon pursue “other options”. Would that include military action to destroy nuclear facilities? America has been reluctant to threaten it openly, as Israel has done. “Iran thinks the risks are minimal,” says Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group, a think­ tank. “There is not much more the us can put under sanctions. Iran has witnessed America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. It knows there is no appetite in the us for military entanglement.”

Even if Iran is right to doubt America’s resolve, Israel may yet act alone, potential­ ly dragging America into a war anyway. Mr Biden may want to leave the Middle East to its fate, but in foreign policy foreigners get a vote, too. His hand could be forced by ei­ ther America’s greatest regional enemy or its greatest regional ally.

In Europe, too, America may fi nd itself drawn deeper into entanglements, even as Mr Biden would like his allies there to take more responsibility for their own security.

Russia has been massing tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine’s borders. A former Soviet republic, Ukraine has already lost part of its territory to Russia (which an­ nexed Crimea in 2014) and its separatist

proxies (who run a breakaway chunk of the east). American offi cials say Mr Putin is making preparations to take another bite of Ukraine, but may not yet have decided whether to go through with this plan.

At their video meeting this week, Mr Bi­ den delivered a stern warning to Mr Putin.

If Russia invades it is likely to get bogged down in a long confl ict; America and Euro­ pean countries will impose severe sanc­ tions; nato will be compelled to increase deployments close to Russia’s borders and America will boost its delivery of arms to Ukraine. If he de­escalates, though, Ameri­ ca and European allies are willing to off er Mr Putin a broad dialogue about security in Europe, though that may fall short of Mr Putin’s demands, such as a guarantee that Ukraine will never join nato.

Although Mr Biden is extremely unlike­ ly to deploy troops to protect Ukraine, Kurt Volker of the Centre for European Policy Analysis, another think­tank, has no doubt that he would uphold America’s commit­ ment to defend nato allies in Europe, in­ cluding the Baltic republics, which like Uk­ raine were once part of the Soviet Union.

Nonetheless, by continuing to torture Uk­ raine Mr Putin is trying to weaken nato by seeding diff erences among its members about how forcefully to respond. And each fresh Russian provocation increases the feeling of vulnerability among nato mem­ bers on Russia’s borders. In Mr Volker’s view, America’s other rivals will be watch­ ing Mr Biden’s response: “Ukraine is Rus­ sia’s Taiwan. Giving away Ukraine is the wrong signal to send China about Taiwan.”

The dragon in the room America’s “intense competition” with Chi­ na is widely seen as the defi ning foreign­ policy challenge of the age. It is the one is­ sue on which Democrats and Republicans can agree, more or less. At any rate, Mr Bi­ den has retained most of Mr Trump’s sanc­ tions and tariff s on China.

Near the hill above Pearl Harbour that is home to America’s Indo­Pacifi c Command the scene appears relaxing, even soothing.

The admirals and generals overseeing mil­ itary operations across half of the world’s surface, from the coast of California to the Maldives, look out over a tourist paradise.

F­22 stealth jets streak into the sky behind airliners bringing holidaymakers to Hono­ lulu; silhouettes of destroyers at sea form the backdrop for surfers waiting for the next big wave on Waikiki.

But the speeches and reports by succes­ sive commanders paint a darkening pic­ ture. China, they say, is arming faster than most had predicted and has more warships than the American navy. It is developing the wherewithal to invade Taiwan, which it regards as its own territory, and to fend off any American forces that might come to its defence. At their summit, Mr Xi warned Mr

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Biden about meddling in Taiwan: “Whoev­ er plays with fi re will get burnt.” Chinese aircraft frequently challenge Taiwan’s air­ defences. Satellites have spotted Chinese mock­ups of American aircraft­carriers (pictured) moved on rails in the Taklama­ kan desert, apparently used for target prac­ tice. The latest Pentagon report on China’s military power, issued last month, esti­ mated that China will roughly quintuple its stockpile of nuclear weapons, to more than 1,000 warheads, by the end of the de­ cade (America and Russia have about 4,000 warheads each). China’s testing of long­distance hypersonic weapons is also worrying American generals.

Strait-shooter Military types tend to assume that Mr Xi has already taken the decision to recover Taiwan by force, but does not yet feel China is strong enough. On this measure, there is a sense of time running out: China may feel it has the fi repower to risk a war in the second half of this decade. Analysts of Chi­ nese politics, however, tend to believe the Chinese leader will be more cautious. They assume he will not want to endanger either his domestic reforms or his own power by launching a highly risky amphibious oper­ ation. “If Xi tries and fails to take Taiwan, he is history,” says Eric Sayers of the Amer­ ican Enterprise Institute, a think­tank. In his summit with Mr Biden Mr Xi said that China would be “patient” on Taiwan.

America’s stance, too, is uncertain.

Since it initiated diplomatic relations with mainland China in 1979, it has followed a policy of “strategic ambiguity”, whereby it refuses to say whether it would come to Taiwan’s defence in the event of a Chinese invasion. The intention is both to discour­ age China from invading and Taiwan from formally declaring itself independent, which China would see as a provocation.

Mr Biden, however, has sounded more hawkish of late. On one recent occasion he declared that America had a “commit­ ment” to defend Taiwan; on another he said the island was “independent”. Each time, offi cials have clarifi ed that there was no change of policy. “Biden’s statements could not be better. It’s perfect. It’s ambigu­ ous,” says David Stilwell, who worked on China policy in the Trump administration.

A more explicit commitment to defend Taiwan, as some now advocate, would be counter­productive, he argues. “If you draw red lines the Chinese will test them.

Red lines are good only if the threat to re­ spond and impose costs is credible.”

Taiwan is a model democracy, a vital producer of advanced semiconductors and an important link in the “fi rst island chain”, running from Japan to Indonesia, that girdles the Chinese mainland. Most pundits and offi cials think that, if Taiwan is attacked, Mr Biden will defend it. Be­

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cause of this, many assume the Chinese will prefer tactics short of a full invasion— anything from cyber­attacks, to seizing outlying islands, to a naval blockade. That would put America in a quandary over whether to escalate, and risk a war that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons.

“The assumption is that it’s in Ameri­ ca’s interest to have a forward presence and a shaping infl uence in Asia,” says Denny Roy of the East­West Centre, “But it’s going to be more expensive and more risky to sustain. We should at least ask…What would be the cost of retrenching?”

Some restrainers favour retaining a military presence in the Indo­Pacifi c to “balance” China. But Michael Swaine of the Quincy Institute says the cost of war would be enormous. America’s best hope of maintaining stability is not to embark on an arms race with China, but to seek an ac­ commodation based on an American com­ mitment not to allow Taiwanese indepen­ dence. “You cannot have deterrence with­ out some degree of reassurance,” he says.

For all the talk of a new cold war, the contest with China lacks the intense ideo­ logical competition that marked the rivalry with the Soviet Union. In another way the rivalry is fi ercer: China is a more powerful economic force than the Soviet Union. Ma­ ny countries that want to align with Amer­ ica on security matters are reluctant to for­ sake their trade with China.

On a hopeful day senior American offi ­ cials predict that Mr Biden’s investment in America’s infrastructure and technology, and China’s internal problems of debt and ageing, will start working in America’s fa­ vour in, say, fi ve years’ time. They also dream of one day breaking Russia away from China, in a mirror­image of Richard Nixon’s trip to China in 1972, which helped to prise it away from the Soviet Union. But for now Mr Putin seems to need America more as an enemy than as a friend.

Hard to sink

In the meantime, Mr Biden is trying to reinvigorate America’s network of friends, partners and allies. Offi cials argue that Mr Biden’s diplomatic outreach has already placed America in a better position than it was under Mr Trump. Echoing Roosevelt, they note that America has become the world’s “vaccine arsenal”, pledging more than a billion covid­19 doses with no strings attached. A global minimum tax on corporations has been agreed on. And America has helped push for progress in the fi ght to curb climate change.

Trade rows with the eu have mostly been set aside. In June nato leaders said China’s behaviour presented “systemic challenges” to the alliance. The eu has called for “a free and open Indo­Pacifi c”, echoing an American catchphrase. This month it unveiled a plan to fi nance global infrastructure, as America has, too, in an admittedly half­baked attempt to rival Chi­ na’s Belt and Road Initiative.

In Asia a deal known as aukus will pro­ vide American and British nuclear­propul­ sion submarine technology to Australia, which in turn is making it clear that it would help America in any war over Tai­ wan. Japan, despite its history of pacifi sm, has signalled that it would join in, too. The three countries, plus India, make up a “Quad” that is gaining geopolitical muscle.

But managing alliances is hard, even for an administration that believes in interna­ tionalism. aukus enraged France, whose contract to supply submarines was can­ celled. Many of America’s closest allies are unnerved by its forthcoming “nuclear pos­ ture review”. Mr Biden has in the past said that the “sole purpose” of America’s nukes should be to deter, or retaliate against, nu­ clear attack. Allies argue that, if adopted, the shift would undermine America’s “ex­ tended deterrence”, which places allies un­ der its nuclear umbrella and so protects them from superior conventional forces.

Some may be driven to seek their own nukes. Another problem is Mr Biden’s aver­ sion to free trade, notably the Trans­Pacifi c Partnership, an 11­country accord negotiat­ ed by Mr Obama and dropped by Mr Trump.

By refusing to join the revised pact, Mr Bi­ den is depriving America of a vital eco­ nomic lever in its contest with China.

Nevertheless, for all America’s lurches in policy, it remains an attractive ally, espe­ cially as China, Russia and Iran become more assertive. On the day your correspon­ dent visited Pearl Harbour, a pair of British patrol vessels were moored alongside American destroyers as part of a new, se­ mi­permanent deployment to the region.

A Japanese submarine was sailing out of port, with its crew lined up topside in white ceremonial uniform. If America re­ tains its dominance in the world, it will be in no small part thanks to its ability to rally former foes and old friends alike. n